Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Over the last year and a half in Japan I have been reminded again and again, by both my blunders in Japanese and my students' in English, that language usage can be a tricky thing.

When you look up sumimasen in a dictionary, you're given "excuse me" as the translation. And "thank you" when you look up arigatougozaimasu and "I'm sorry" for gomennesai. However, that does not mean that you are now ready to insert them into conversation. Not by a long shot! Sumimasen seems to be rarely used in formal/business settings to mean "excuse me." The more apologetic and polite gomennasai is more appropriate. Situations that warrant a quick sumimasenin my office--passing next to or overtaking someone in the hallways, for example--wouldn't need the English equivalent back home.

And "thank you?" Well, it has it's place I'm sure. But in daily interactions I use sumimasen and gomennasai just as often. For example, if I'm still at my desk instead of helping with lunch preparations when I'm given my lunch tray, it's most appropriate to say "excuse me" not "thank you" since it lets the listener know I appreciate their effort and am about to join in as well. And then if someone goes out of their way especially, like bringing presents from a trip, a hearty gomennasai will almost always be paired with the most polite thank you, domoarigatougozaimasu.

Cultural understanding goes a long way to aid dictionary translations, or mistranslations. A few months ago one of the teachers I am paired with was telling me a story about why she was so flustered. She pointed to the hallway we were walking through and said, "I coach this road." She is an incredible teacher and super friendly but, obviously, her English vocabulary is somewhat limited. However, I had been at the school long enough to know there are teacher-led student teams that clean certain areas of the school after lunch. And I knew the schedule enough to know that we'd just finished this cleaning time. Understanding the culture, and not the words, what was what facilitated our successful communication.

Unfortunately, such was not the case when it came to the scooping out of night soil. My newest Japanese word: kumitori. It is the "scooping out of night soil." Apparently, my toilet is not connected to a treatment plant or communal septic system but is kinda like an outhouse. One that gets scooped out from time to time. But of course I have to give the go-ahead before these kinds of things happen to my house and so it falls on the English teachers at school to explain the scooping out of night soil to me.

"Your toilet tank needs to be emptied." "Your sewage system is bad. You need a new one." "Can you empty your toilet tank tomorrow?" Oh damn, I thought. I really don't understand anything you're saying. The dictionary entry of kumitori as "scooping out night soil" wasn't much clearer so I couldn't blame my teachers for the confusion.

Eventually, I came to know that the kumitori company was coming to empty my septic tank in preparation for the reconstruction of my entire sewage system. This took place over a weekend. The preparations were the weekend before. Unfortunately these were unannounced, giving both me and the workers a bit of a shock. Especially the woman who woke me up at 9:00am on a Saturday to bang around my house and remind me that they'd be doing the construction next weekend. Yes, I thought, next weekend! When I'm not here. Not this weekend...at nine in the morning! Too bad the majority of my Japanese is rather formal and polite and so I was unable to convey such sentiments.

When it comes to things like the digging up of night soil, no translation will explain it enough. You just have to experience it.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Shortly after writing the most recent post my beloved laptop Hank the Rockstar died. I turned him off one last time and that was it. Buying and shipping a new computer took time but within the last month, Lil' Percy arrived.

And of course there's still a month gap from when Lil' Percy arrived to now...Oops!

I have been furiously studying for the Foreign Service Officer Test. I took it March 5th in the US Consulate in Osaka. I'd like to work in embassies one day as a Foreign Service Officer. This is the second step after submitting an application in a process that usually lasts awhile...sometimes a couple years-while. But after talking with the extremely friendly Foreign Service Officers after the three hour test I am more confident than ever that this is what I'd like to do. They just about talked my ear off! They are my people.

The test is, as one current consulate employee described it to me, kind of like a game of Trivial Pursuit. The questions are about management philosophy, economics, US government, US history and culture, as well as world history and geography. I was asked to answer questions ranging from the history of England to the location of certain countries to the proceedings of Congress to the appropriate way to handle employee reviews. On top of the breadth of knowledge, the test results mean different things at different times and are mostly dependent on job availability.

So, though this job looks to be in my future, how far in my future we'll just have to wait and see.